This Story Starts With A Death

There are no tears for the man in the casket.

He lies in the dirt, swathed in velvet drapes. Lies with his eyes closed and his arms crossed, with his lips barely parted in what could be the brink of a laugh or a cry.

Around him, twelve people stand in rows. Their heads are tilted to the soil, bowed to the earth.

Everything returns to earth, one way or another. And no one knows this better than these twelve, standing around their fallen soldier. There they linger, looking on at the dirt as if maybe there was a solution to… to...

Because none of them are here to pay their respects. Not a single one of the twelve are even thinking about the man in the middle.

They are thinking, instead, of their own clocks. Clocks that are ticking, ticking, ticking until the day their own threads are cut short, snip! Just like that.

And so no one blinks an eye when the man who laughed with them, cried with them, kissed their cheeks and fed them chocolates, is lowered into the dirt. They’ve already forgotten about him.

The smell of death lingers in the air. It will stay on their clothes for weeks.

---

“Lily, what are you doing over there?”

The young girl looked up from her fixation. “Come, see this!” she exclaimed, pointing adamantly at the dirt ground. “It’s a centipede, Mommy!”

Mrs. Watson frowned, and shook her head vigorously. “How many times do I have to tell you? Bugs are dirty, and they carry diseases. You shouldn’t--”

“Look, Mommy!” Lily held out her hand. A long black centipede crawled in circles in the center of her palm. “It tickles!”

Mrs. Watson trembled. She was a large woman, and her trembles were no exception. “Put that down, Lily! No, don’t bring it any closer, what are you--LILY--”

Oblivious to the clamor, a young boy continued walking next to his aunt. Simon was a tall child, too thin for his age and half the weight. He was balancing on the edge of the curb, one foot in front of the other. In his head, he imagined himself twenty feet above the ground on a tightrope: “Look at him go! Simon Evans, ladies and gentlemen! Look at his footing, his grace!” He took another step, relishing the gasp of his onlookers. Steady now, don’t tremble. One, two, one two. The audience was cheering below him! Louder and louder and louder--

“Simon, did you hear me?”

Simon jumped at his aunt’s piercing voice. He stumbled, and tipped sideways onto the concrete street.

He could feel himself falling, tilting off the tightrope and plummeting toward the ground. There were noises everywhere, loud and quiet at the same time, clamoring and silenced. He fell in slow motion and in timelapse, not knowing when he would hit the ground or if he already had.

His audience gasped.

Somewhere, he could hear his aunt yelling something. What was it? What--

He felt his arm being yanked, and suddenly he was not falling but instead standing shakily on the edge of the sidewalk. He looked up, just in time to see a black sedan whoosh by him, barely missing him by the nose.

He looked on as the car sped down the street, watched it drive until it was just a black dot in the distance.

He looked up at his aunt, her fingers wrapped tightly around his bicep, red in the face, an expression of both fear and anger scrunching up her features.

He said, “That car was definitely going past the speed limit.”

---

Simon was well aware that he could’ve died.

“You could’ve died,” his mother seethed, pacing the kitchen floor. “I leave you alone for an hour and you almost get run over by a car! What were you thinking?” She looked back at Simon, at his bloodied elbow and his scraped chin.

Simon frowned. “I didn’t fall on purpose.”

Mrs. Evans sighed. “I know. I know you didn’t. I should’ve sent your brother to look after you; Jenny should’ve been watching--”

“Auntie Jenny was the one who grabbed me,” Simon said. “It’s not her fault I fell either.”

Mrs. Evans sighed again. (She did a lot of sighing.) “What were you even doing, to fall into the street?”

Simon answered, “I was walking on a tightrope.”

She shook her head. “Look at me, Simon.”

Simon looked. “Why are you so upset, Momma?”

She sighed, and started muttering under her breath. Simon only caught a few words: Family. Deserves to know. Crazy.

“Momma?” he asked tentatively.

She chewed her lip, then looked at her son. “Listen carefully, boy. I will not repeat myself. A’ight?” She closed her eyes, and for a second Simon thought she’d fallen asleep.

And then she announced, “There’s a curse on this family.”

Simon thought he heard incorrectly. “What?”

His mother repeated, “There is a curse on this family. Do you understand?”

Simon did not understand. He nodded.

His mother sighed. “Every one of our family dies before they turn fifty. It’s happened to everyone, my parents and my parents’ parents and their parents before them. We don’t know when or how it started. In the 70’s, my great-grandfather almost broke it, but at 11:59 he choked on a strawberry from his birthday cake. See, it has affected our family for generations. It’s like a… what do you call them?”

“Curse?” Simon suggested.

“No…” She snapped her fingers. “It’s like tradition. That’s what it is.”

---

He looked in the mirror.

“Your tie is crooked.” Simon’s brother was reading a comic book from across the room.

“Shut up, Davis.”

Davis smiled crookedly. “Just looking out for you, little bro.”

Simon straightened his tie. “Davis?” he said quietly.

“Hmm?”

Simon hesitated, drawing a soft breath. “I can’t believe Dad is dead,” he murmured.

In the mirror, he watched his brother nod slowly. Swallow. “I know, little bro.” He cleared his throat. “But that’s just what happens. Car crashes occur all the time, it just…” He didn’t finish his sentence.

A layer of silence settled over the room. Simon embraced it. Silence was always welcome when people were too tired to speak.

He glanced at his brother. “Davis, have you ever heard of a curse in our family?”

Davis blinked. “In our family? Uhm. No. Why?”

Simon paused. He felt a smidgeon of pride for knowing something before his older brother, but he quickly pushed the thought away.

He looked at his brother. Was it better to know that you were going to die?

Simon bit his lip, and then shook his head. “Nothing. I’m just kidding.”

Davis shrugged. “Alright. Your tie looks nice.”

The funeral was silent. At the end of it, Simon’s mother squeezed his hand and whispered, “Told you so.”

Simon stared at her.

Then he looked down at himself, at his black blazer and black trousers, at the body that would be gone in less than fifty years.

He was fourteen now. High school was hard, harder than he’d expected. Every single day he imagined himself collapsing, folding in on himself, disappearing from the face of the earth.

Fourteen years old. He was almost 30% of the way there.

He took off his tie.

Mrs. Evans scrunched her nose. “Where are you going?”

Simon looked up at his mother and answered, “To live my life.”

There was a lake at the edge of the cemetery. Simon ran toward it, shoving past his uncles and aunts, past his cousins and his astonished brother. He closed his eyes, and for those five seconds he believed he was flying.

When he reached the edge of the lake, he jumped in.

---

Simon Evans was a tall boy. Too long for his age and half the weight. Sometimes he liked to pretend he was walking on a tightrope. Sometimes he jumped into lakes.

Now, he was sitting on the porch of his house, looking up at the night sky.

Fifty years, he thought to himself. Fifty years young. Fifty years alive. Fifty years. Huh.

The air was quiet around him. Like every critter, every rock, every leaf was holding their breath.

One minute until fifty years.

“I’m going to die today,” Simon said aloud.

50 seconds.

“And that’s okay.”

40 seconds.

Look at what you did, Simon. You met so many people. You told so many stories. You read the world. You tasted the sun on your skin and on your lips, climbed mountains and dove under the sea. Look at you, plane-jumper, ship-sailer, car-racer, wave-surfer. You took your time to fall and then to pick yourself up again. Fell in love, and out of it. You took all the risks, fell into the deepest depths and rose to the highest heights.

Look at you, Simon. You laughed. You lived.

Three seconds.

He swore he could feel the curse simmering in his bones. He’d felt it all his life, but it never mattered. It didn’t matter.

Two seconds.

He looked up at the stars. He imagined they were cheering him on.

One second.

Death was just another adventure.

Simon took a deep breath.

And then it was twelve, and he could feel the air on his face and the wind in his hair and the grass between his toes and the subtle rocking of his chair, and he could hear the trees whispering congratulations and the cicadas singing celebration songs because it was twelve and Simon Evans was not dead.

He looked around, at the world that was forgiving only because he’d done everything wrong and everything right and that was that.

That was that.

He smiled.